At the LDS Church Office Building today there was a large team of disaster cleanup workers. All of them had on protective clothing and wearing gas masks. I quickly took this photo before having to leave the area due to health concerns. I assume it was a sewage problem due to the stench. It is an unfortunate mess (no pun intended). This is a little bit of bad timing since this is a HUGE weekend for Salt Lake City. Tens of thousands of visitors are in town for the NBA All-Star Game. Hope that the Church can get things cleaned up quickly.
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| Photo taken on February 16, 2023 |
Sidenote:
This weekend is also President's Day. In honor of this holiday, in this second part of this blog post I want to write briefly about a few amazing men who have been given the title of President.
PRESIDENTS: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY
THE GOOD INFO
This year we will observe Presidents Day on February 20th. The holiday is now always celebrated on the third Monday in February, thanks to the 1968 Uniform Monday Holiday Act. It was established in 1885 in honor of President George Washington's birthday. Washington's birthday was actually on February 22, 1732. President Abraham Lincoln's birthday, February 12, is also near this date and is often honored on President's day. Washington was the only president unanimously elected. (meaning all of the States Representatives voted for him) I have a great love for Washington and Lincoln.All was well in my world. Until I read this book, "Awakening to our Awful Situation- Warnings from the Nephite Prophets." The book examines the secret combinations happening in our day that the LDS members are warned about by Moroni in Ether 8:23-25.
A quote from the book:
"Indeed the worst kind of evil is not to be found in any single rogue individual. What is much worse is s a combination of power, wherein many evil persons unite their efforts under a central guiding hand - a secret combination."I learned about a few modern day "secret combinations" that are alive and well in our society today. Here are a few of them.
- The Federal Reserve
- Council of Foreign Relations (CFR)
- Trilateral Commission
- Bilderbergers
- The United Nations
- Skull and Bones Society
George W. Bush wrote in his autobiography, "[In my] senior year I joined Skull and Bones, a secret society; so secret, I can't say anything more." When asked what it meant that he and Bush were both Bonesmen, former presidential candidate John Kerry said, "Not much, because it's a secret."
Even the former President George Bush senior was also a member of the Skull and Bones.
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| Owl and Key is a “senior” level of Skull and Bones. |
Now I realize that some people reading this post might not believe the information, or think it is good to expose such information. I understand that. However, we are commanded to waste and wear out our lives in bringing to light all the hidden things of darkness. D & C 123:13
"Therefore, that we should waste and wear out our lives in bringing to light all the hidden things of darkness, wherein we know them; and they are truly manifest from heaven."Doctrine and Covenants 123: 13
Spencer W. Kimball Journals Now Accessible LINK:
Most of the 34 journals are typed, and many pages include underlining, usually in red pencil with brief annotations and marginalia written in his distinctive hand.
Foreword
This book, the engaging record of the life and experiences of Russell Marion Nelson, is a fulfillment of a great dream. In these pages he has set forth a chronicle of his noble parentage and crystallized the many experiences of himself and his adorable family. This work will bring joy and peace and happiness to its readers.
The first time I saw the Nelson family was at a stake conference meeting in 1964. Eight daughters were singing a song, accompanied by their mother, Dantzel. I was amazed and pleased, and I thought, “What a perfect family! What beautiful parents! And what delightful children to grow up in one household.” I have known them from that time forward, and now there are nine daughters and one son. Brother Nelson has always been a family man first, and now all his family unite to bring him honor.
I owe much to him as a doctor. It was in 1971 in England that I first spoke to him of my heart problems. When we returned to the United States, investigation showed that I had problems with a deteriorating valve in my heart and an obstruction in an artery. I felt my life slipping away, and I wondered if perhaps the time had come for a younger man to enter the Quorum of the Twelve and do the work I could no longer do. But at the inspired insistence of President Harold B. Lee, I was prompted to press on. Therefore, my life was placed in the hands of this young doctor, in whom we noted a sweet Spirituality. Because of his skill as a surgeon—one who trusts in the power of the priesthood and relies on the Spirit of the Lord—my life was spared, even though the risks were very great for a man of my seventy-seven years.
We became close as I recovered from the open-heart surgery that he performed perfectly. Whenever I became discouraged, there was always his sweet, understanding spirit to buoy me up.
Then President Lee died in December 1973. We never thought it could happen, for he was younger than I and seemingly in good health; therefore, we were all taken by surprise. Brother Nelson, of his own accord, came to my side immediately in case he should be needed. I appreciated his thoughtfulness very much...
It pleases me very much to note that he has done a superb work in assembling the information to bring this book into existence...It seems to me that it has been done beautifully and without flaw. Long will his children and their posterity honor this great man, and long will they remember that he followed the precepts of his Lord through his prophets...
President Spencer W. Kimball Salt Lake City, Utah March 1979
10 comments:
I have zero respect for Lincoln. The man was a big government advocate before he became president. He rose to the ignominious rank of tyrant in his quest to create 'the Union'. He wiped his backside with the Constitution and trampled over the rights of the southern states. Do not revere him.
Have to agree with the previous commenter regarding Lincoln. It was the Lincoln administration that destroyed the republic the founders established and set up a national union in its place.
I had seen the information regarding Nelson on another blog. I am convinced he is likewise a dangerous individual who misleads people to get them to do what he wants.
Speaking of journal writing. RMN visited my mission when he was an apostle. This was a highly anticipated event that proved to be underwhelming.
In my mission journal I did not write anything specific to the visit. No profound words of instructions. No stirring words of faith. I simply wrote that an apostle had visited the mission. In fact, what I recall about the experience was RMN talking about himself, and I did not write this in my journal for it seemed so vain and trivial. Apparently the self-promotion of RMN is a persistent character trait.
It's very interesting to be able to see these things, and it explains a lot about the weird things that have been going on this past few years.
Others have commented regarding Lincoln, and here's a good book:
https://a.co/d/4uWnPXn
@aredesuyo -
The Real Lincoln is a great book. I'm glad you recommended it.
Thank you, David for your excellent posts, pictures, and research. You contribute so much to the Covenant people. Loving you, Jeanene Custer ❤️
I finally know who RMN reminds me of... Gilderoy Lockhart!
Lincoln was corrupt like the most other presidents. When he was a senator he supported a constitutional amendment banning the US government from getting involved in the slavery issue. He also supported forcing northerners to help return slaves to their owners. The emancipation proclamation only freed slaves in territories that were in rebellion against the north - he didn’t free slaves in states that were loyal to the union. He didn’t ‘free’ the slaves until 2 years into the civil war began. Why? Because it was purely a political move. Lincoln cemented power with the federal government and ended the debate of states rights vs. the federal government.
Lincoln caused the death of 500,000 Americans (civil war) all in the name of maintaining power at the federal level. No other nation in the world resorted to that kind of violence to end slavery. That is because Lincoln didn’t care about ending slavery. He is quoted as saying if he could have maintained the union without freeing the slaves he would have. History has been rewritten to make him out to be saint he was not and that the civil war was about slavery which it was not. Don’t take my word for it - just read what Lincoln said and did. He’s one of the worst presidents in US history.
I’ve made this comment before regarding RMN but it’s worth repeating here on this post. Having worked with cardiac surgeons my entire career, and most of that inside of the surgical group Dr. Nelson founded, I can tell you with a great deal of confidence that instances like this are NOT a display of narcissism on his part. RMN is a great medical pioneer/engineer on whose shoulders we owe a profound debt of gratitude for our current level of understanding of modern cardiac surgery. On a side note, you always hear about (and we celebrate) all the lives saved by medical advances such as those RMN was largely responsible for, but you never hear about all the lives lost in the process while they guessed at solutions and got it wrong trying to figure it all out. And there are A LOT of those to be certain…been there, seen that.
Having the guts to be a pioneer comes with a cost to your sensibilities. You have to put out of your mind what others may think of you and adopt a geocentric view of the universe. Once that becomes part of the psyche, it’s nearly impossible to remove. In fact, after 30 years living that way, the only things I can think of that would fundamentally reverse that world view would be a heroic dose of psilocybin (half-joking there…but you really should check out the research being done at John’s Hopkins right now) OR and encounter with the divine in which you ACTUALLY stood in the presence of the Savior and had all your nothingness revealed to you in a way that even the mightiest of prayers and tingliest of sensations running down your legs could never produce. So for me personally, the reason it has always been painfully obvious to me that RMN has never been in the presence of the Lord, and likewise cannot claim to have an authentic message to deliver to us from Him, is because he continually displays all the natural human dispositions of a man lost and fallen and all the hubris of a pioneering cardiac surgeon.
Having said all that, lest you should think I’m defending the man, I think we are dealing with something perhaps more nefarious than narcissism in RMN. He KNOWS he’s not the guy but pretends unto it just the same. To bring this closer to home with a twist of irony, this would be like you were an orthopedic surgeon and after completing your patient’s hip replacement, deciding what the heck, while he’s asleep, I’ll go ahead and open the chest and see if I can figure out how to replace this guy’s bum heart valve, even though I’ve never done it before but I’ll tell everyone else in the room, including the family in the waiting room….”Don’t worry I got this, I’ve done it before, I just haven’t ever told anyone about it because it was too special of an experience. But you can trust me.”
And then the guy dies on the table after 12 hours of experimental surgery. Only in our present case with our family and friends, the death is spiritual.
Thank you Jim for your perspective.
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